Hard Days Ahead

Dec 15. It was May 2007, when Ku. Mayawati led Bahujan Samaj Party swept the Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections,winning 206 out of 403 seats. The dalit czarina silenced all her critics by taking her party to majority for the first time,becoming the first majority party in the state since 1991.The social engineering agenda of the 52 year politician had reaped huge dividends as Mayawati became centre of all attention in the politics of India. Mulayam Singh Yadav and his Samajwadi Party associates could never understand what had hit them.

Fast Forward,March 2009.Mayawati begins her campaign of becoming the first Dalit Prime Minister of India by initiating her Lok Sabha campaign.She fields 509 out of 543 candidates, most of whom are either rich industrialists or dreaded goons bailed out by the Chief Minister.Two months later, the results are declared. The Manmohan Singh led Indian National Congress wins 206 out of 545 Lok Sabha seats. But the even more shocking is the Congress romping home in UP, winning 21 out of 80 seats in the state.On the other hand ,BSP could just win 2 seats more than its previous tally of 18. The victory of Congress was widely attributed to Congress General Secratery Rahul Gandhi's vigorous campaign in the state.The Gandhi scion's visit to Dalit homes worked wonders as Congress made deep inroads into the BSP's Dalit votebank.

As the recent results of the bye-elections to the 11 assembly constituencies and a Lok Sabha seat is to be taken into account, BSP has won 9 out of 11 seats while the Congress has only won one seat of Lucknow West by Shyam Sharan Shukla. However , Congress won the crucial Firozabad Lok Sabha seat,with SP rebel Raj Babbar defeating Mulayam singh's daughter -in-law, Dimple. The win was crucial as Firozabad seat was vacated by Akhilesh Yadav ,as he had chosen to vacate it over Kannauj.

Now speaking about Mission 2012, BSP has managed to win 9 seats which indicates that the BSP has still not lost touch with its voters. On other hand,its main rival,the Samajwadi Party has shown a degradation both in terms of votes and seats.The Congress may have won 21 seats this time but the party has much to do before it can hope to pull of an upset in 2012 when the state goes for polls. No doubt the Congress leadership has been entrusted upon the responsibility to strengthen the party base in the state. Congress general secy. Rahul Gandhi has instructed its party workers to build up the party base in the state. The NSUI and Youth Congress wings have been instructed to recruit more youths to the party.

It is now left to be seen how much does the Congress succeed in rebuild itself in the journey towards winning back the state which was its stronghold.